E-Newsletter January 31, 2005

Released January 31, 2005

Greetings!

This month, FairVote-The Center for Voting and Democracy is casting a
spotlight on the right to vote and fair election methods around the
world. Here at home there are significant developments as well,
including a binding vote for instant runoff voting upcoming in
Burlington (VT), a series of upcoming reform workshops in North
Carolina and increasing calls for a right to vote in our Constitution.

THIS MONTH’S NEWSLETTER

1. Full Representation Sweeps through Canada 2. Vermont Puts IRV on Ballot 3. North Carolina Reform Roundtables Start up in February 4. Washington State Shows Electoral Reform is Non-Partisan Issue 5. Iraq, Afghanistan, Eastern Bloc Joining the World of Full Representation 6. Terminating Partisan Gerrymandering 7. Right to Vote Around the World 8. IRV Around the World 9. In-Person IRV to Elect Democratic Party Chairman 10. Legislative Update: IRV on the Move 11. San Francisco’s IRV Success Story 12. Monopoly Politics and Dubious Democracy 13. Upcoming Events

COVER STORY

Full Representation Sweeps through Canada

Five of Canada’s ten provinces are re-examining their voting systems,
with serious interest growing in replacing their U.S.-style
winner-take-all systems with full representation. Equally significant
is the mechanism by which these provinces decided to move forward with
full representation. British Columbia assembled a "citizens assembly"
of 160 randomly chosen citizens from all walks of life who then spent
several months studying various voting systems. In the end, they
overwhelmingly selected the choice voting method of full
representation, and the voters of British Columbia will have the
opportunity to vote on whether to adopt choice voting in a May
referendum.

Meanwhile, Prince Edward Island's Premier, Pat Binns, has announced
that the province's citizens will vote in November 2005 on whether to
adopt the mixed member proportional (MMP) method of full
representation. If MMP is adopted, Prince Edward Island could become
the first Canadian province to use full representation, with the
changes potentially going into effect with the provincial elections in
2006 or 2007.

Ontario has also begun planning for the creation of a citizens'
assembly on electoral reform. Additionally, New Brunswick assembled a
Committee on Legislative Democracy, which issued approximately 80
recommendations to lower voter cynicism and stop turnout decline, and a
switch to the MMP method of full representation.

Now imagine if half of the states in our country made similar moves to
discuss full representation, and if the process by which they did it
was to let the citizens decide.

Links to More on Canada’s Electoral Reform

More information from FairVote http://archive.fairvote.org/pr/global/canadaer.htm

Burlington, Vermont will have a binding vote on adopting IRV for
mayoral elections on March 1st. The vote follows on the heels of an
overwhelming victory for a similar advisory question in November.
FairVote's analyst Terry Bouricius reports that the League of Women
Voters is a key backer of the measure, which was placed on the ballot
by a vote of the city council.

North Carolina Reform Roundtables Start up in February

Was North Carolina the Florida of 2004?

Join us in February, when FairVote hosts a timely discussion on our
electoral system, what went wrong in 2004, and where we can go from
here.

Part of FairVote’s Reform Roundtables series, these four North Carolina
workshops will deal with the electoral problems that plagued elections
in 2004, including missing votes, staggeringly expensive runoffs, and
minority under-representation. Presentations include “Is a 3% turnout
worth $3.5 million?,” “Unfair Results and Uncompetitive Races:
Alternatives to Gerrymandering,” “Does North Carolina need a right to
vote?,” and “Missing Votes: Was North Carolina the new Florida?”

Workshops will feature panels of experts including Representative Paul
Luebke, UNC College of Law’s Anita Earls and Bob Phillips of Common
Cause. This is your chance to participate in the pressing issue of
electoral reform that will only grow more important in the years to
come.

So come on down, and learn how you can make a difference for the future
of elections in North Carolina and America at large. All events are
free and open to the public, and a free lunch will be served. For
additional information and registration, check out www.fairvote.org/nc. Please log on and RSVP!

Washington State Shows Electoral Reform is Non-Partisan Issue

While some see electoral reform as a partisan issue, in the aftermath
of the last two presidential election cycles all political parties have
been hurt by our broken electoral system. The Washington State
Republican party, citing massive electoral problems, is still calling
for a re-vote even after Democrat Christine Gregoire has been sworn
into office. Despite the passage of the Help America Vote Act, lost
votes, poorly designed ballots, voter suppression, voter fraud and
general lack of accountability have severely diminished the integrity
of our voting system. At this point few large states can reliably decide
close elections. The simple fact is that unless changes are made
to the way we vote to better ensure that all eligible voters can cast a
ballot that will be correctly counted, all political parties will
suffer.

POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM

Iraq, Afghanistan, Eastern Bloc – Joining the World of Full Representation

The Canadians are not the only ones who understand the value of full
representation. Nearly every emerging democracy in the Eastern Bloc has
adopted a full representation system, as have Iraq (party list system)
and Afghanistan (limited voting). Iraq’s departure from the
U.S./British winner-take-all election methods is particularly
revealing, with the United States seeing that at least in other nations
it can be critically important to ensure all key political forces earn
a seat at the table. In Iraq’s elections last weekend, political
parties only needed to capture a relatively low percentage of votes to
earn seats. The biggest parties also tended to run slates with a mix of
ethnic groups and religious beliefs, reflecting the desire of most
Iraqis to move beyond balkanization. Following this spirit of
attempting to reflect diversity in the party lists, women must be at
least every third candidate on each party’s slate.

In fact, full representation is the norm in full-fledged, functioning
democracies. Freedom House, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that
assesses political and economic freedom around the world, scores
nations yearly on the level of political rights and civil liberties
their citizens possess. The great majority of the countries with
populations of over two million that they considered free in 2005 use
full representation systems. Only eight out of the forty-five elected
their most important legislative bodies using winner-take-all rules. Of
those eight, three – Australia, France and the United Kingdom – use
full representation for other national elections, and Canada is moving
towards full representation for increasing numbers of regional
legislatures. The United States joins United Kingdom, Canada, Ghana,
and Mongolia among free nations with exclusively winner-take-all voting
methods at a national level.

For more information about what types of full
representation systems are used around the world visit
http://archive.fairvote.org/library/geog/europe/systems.htm

Terminating Partisan Gerrymandering?

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to replace the state's
current partisan gerrymandering regime with an independent
redistricting commission composed of retired judges is generating
discussion and controversy. Current redistricting practices essentially
allow legislators to choose their voters. It is the winner-take-all
nature of our elections that gives mapmakers such power – and
complicates efforts to reform redistricting.

Line-drawing bodies are limited by the Voting Rights Act prohibition on
the dilution of minority voting strength, as well as the general issue
of partisanship highly correlated to geography. Typically, you simply
can’t draw a competitive district out of a region densely populated
with members of one party. Take the nonpartisan state legislative
redistricting plan created in Georgia in 2004 after a redistricting
lawsuit. The line-drawing body did not look at partisan data at all,
and yet in the 180-person House, only 8 districts had a margin of
victory between 0 and 5%. In the 55-person Senate, only 3 districts had
a margin between 0 and 5%. The turnover in both chambers largely was
due to open seats resulting from resignations and primary losses. Only
six incumbents lost in the House, and most of these only occurred where
a Democrat was placed in a Republican district. In the next election
cycle we can expect that these seats won't be competitive at all.

By acknowledging the value of independent redistricting in minimizing
partisan influence over voting behavior, but recognizing the
limitations of such schemes in creating competitive districts, FairVote
seeks to inject the deeper problem into this discussion:
winner-take-all elections. Steven Hill and David Lesher of the New
America Foundation recently seized upon exactly this point in a
Sacramento Bee op-ed: "If the governor is going to open this debate,
then let's really open it. Let's put everything on the table, not just
redistricting, but proportional voting systems, new voter registration
technologies, instant runoff voting and more.... Sure, an impartial
'public interest' redistricting would improve the protectionist
gerrymander that incumbent lawmakers manufactured. But battles would
still erupt over the new district lines, and experts say that even a
map drawn by impartial judges would change only a fraction of the
Legislature's 120 seats."

Links to More on California’s Redistricting

Full article from Sacramento Bee http://archive.fairvote.org/pr/sacbee.htm

Oscar nominees, announced last week, are a big topic of conversation
this time of year. But did you know that the Oscar nominees are chosen
every year by the choice voting method of full representation recently
recommended for British Columbia? Recently highlighted the New York
Times, Entertainment Weekly, and Movie City News Online, the Oscar
nomination process begins in when the Academy’s nearly 6,000 members
receive their ballots. All Members vote in the choice of best picture,
and then vote within their area of expertise. They rank their choices
one to five, and winning a nomination takes about a fifth of the vote.
Nearly all voters help nominate one of their top choices by ranking
their choices one to five in each category. When the ballots are
received, the number needed to receive a nomination is determined by
dividing the total number of ballots by six. The first choices are then
counted and the nominees receiving enough votes are designated as
official contenders. If there are not five films nominated by enough
first choice votes, the counting process begins again for the second
choice votes, and so on, until there are five nominees.

This system of choosing nominees encourages diversity and greater
interest in the final Oscar voting. Choice voting has been used since
the 1930s, when PriceWaterhouse, the company that tabulates the Oscar
votes, was called upon to come up with the most fair and accurate
voting system, one that would reflect the diverse opinions of factions
within the Academy.

Links to More on Oscars Choice Voting

The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/movies/oscars/09onei.html?oref=login&oscars

With the passing of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to
Congress and a 1972 presidential candidate, FairVote would like to take
this moment to recognize her contribution to encouraging diversity in
politics and pushing the envelope. In recognition of her efforts,
FairVote seeks to carry forward the fight for fair and full
representation. There is still much work to be done, as women and
communities of color remain severely underrepresented in legislatures.

Links to More on Women’s Representation

State-by-state charts of the stagnant levels of women’s representation in state legislatures:

http://www.ncsl.org/programs/wln/2004ElectionInfo.htm

The benefits of full representation in boosting women's representation:

http://archive.fairvote.org/women/index.html

THE RIGHT TO VOTE INITIATIVERight to Vote Around the World

The right for every citizen to cast a vote is guaranteed explicitly in
109 of 119 democracies in the world, including Afghanistan and now
Iraq. However, contrary to popular belief, the U.S. Constitution
does offer the same guarantee. Instead, voting is regulated by each
state, which is why over 8 million U.S. citizens are currently denied
the right to vote and millions more lost their vote last year due to
inefficient and under funded election administration.

Federal and state legislation are being drafted to help set universal
standards for electoral policies such as provisional ballot counting,
ID requirements, voting machine specifications among others, the topic
of voter registration has received little national attention. At
present, nearly 1/3 of all U.S. citizens are not registered to vote and
unless one lives in one of the six states that have same-day voter
registration, an unregistered citizen will be unable to vote. Most
countries require a voter to be registered to vote, actively registers
its voters.

Contrast this to Iraq, which even with all its problems boasts already
has a far higher percentage of registered voters than the U.S. As
typical of most nations, voter registration in Iraq is automatic.
The election commission automatically registered all citizens who had
an oil-for-food card. Because of this, most Iraqis only needed to show
up and vote without worrying about voter registration.

Here are a few concrete ways nations pursue automatic registration. In
the United Kingdom, the election commission mails a form to each
household listing the names of citizens registered to vote at that
address, citizens are then asked to modify the form, adding or
subtracting names as needed and then returning the form. In Ghana,
every year government officials travel from region to region and set up
voter registration locations for a few days to a few weeks in order to
get all voters in that region registered.

In many European Countries, national ID cards serve as an election card
as well. The citizen is automatically registered upon reaching voting
age and must simply present the card to vote on election day in the
correct precinct. Of course such a process could be set up for voting
separate from a national ID card in the United States.

The United States should take an active approach to registering voters.
Such a policy will reduce last minute influxes in voter registration in
the weeks leading up to election day, overwhelming election offices. It
will lead to more complete and clean voter rolls, a basic condition of
fair elections.

Get involved in a local effort to improve voter
registration in your city – contact our office for concrete ideas to
move toward automatic registration at [email protected] or go to http://archive.fairvote.org/righttovote/getinvolved.htm

Contact your Congressperson to ask them to
co-sponsor Congressman Jesse Jackson’s Right to Vote Amendment, which
will be introduced as HJ Resolution 28 later this spring.

Links to More on Right to Vote

The Right to Vote in national constitution http://archive.fairvote.org/righttovote/Kirshner.htm

The Ace Project’s on-line guide to voting around the worldhttp://www.aceproject.org/main/english/vr/vr.htm

Support for Right to Vote Amendment grows as
hundreds of activist pledge to support electoral reform:
http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0124-09.htm

Australia, home of the first known governmental IRV election in 1893,
held its October parliamentary elections without a hitch. The
parliament is chosen every three years and has been using IRV for its
lower chamber, the House of Representatives, since 1922.

In 2002, Papua New Guinea's government moved to adopt instant runoff
voting for its legislative elections. The system was seen as a way to
encourage representatives to reach beyond their base, as plurality
election resulted in candidates winning with low plurality votes, often
under 25%. Used in a special election in December 2003, IRV saw only 2%
occurance of “spoiled” ballots, lower than many American elections.
This fact is remarkable considering Papua New Guinea is a nation of 5
million with a low literacy rate of about 65%.

While Ireland's October presidential election saw incumbent Mary
McAleese win uncontested, the 1997 race demonstrated the need for IRV.
The field contained five candidates. McAleese gained only 45% of
first-choices. But she was the second choice of enough supporters of
losing candidates to win easily with 58% after the bottom three
candidates were eliminated. Her predecessor Mary Robinson also was
elected by IRV in 1990, winning in the second count after trailing
among first choices. More than 99% of voters cast valid ballots in
Irish presidential races.

In-Person IRV to Elect Democratic Party Chairman

On February 12th, the 447 members of the Democratic National Committee
will elect a new chair in a series of runoffs, designed to produce a
winner with majority support. The count in fact will simulate IRV, with
the last-place candidate eliminated before each new vote.

The National Journal’s Hotline recently released a poll of 187 DNC
members’ preferences for chair. The poll featured first, second and
last choices, as advocated by FairVote for polling in any
multi-candidate race. Now if any candidate withdrew, the
pollsters need only redistribute that contestant’s second choices among
the remaining candidates and provide a press release proclaiming the
new numbers the very same day.

Perhaps Democrats will consider that generating a majority winner
through IRV or a series of runoffs is a fairer process that should be
more universally applied. Similarly. Utah Republicans’ success in using
IRV to nominate candidates and elect party officers at their state
convention could have broader lessons for fair elections in Utah.

Legislative Update: IRV on the Move

Several state legislatures are advancing IRV legislation. For example,
a Vermont bill to implement IRV for statewide offices has the backing
of the League of Women Voters, Grange, AFL-CIO, Common Cause and the
Secretary of State. Maine will consider implementing IRV for state
legislative and gubernatorial races, and its Secretary of State will
soon release a study on how IRV could be implemented.

A Washington state bill to enable charter cities to adopt IRV has deep
and bipartisan support--including the Senate Republican leader and the
chair of the House Local Government Committee. We ultimately expect
even more states to debate IRV than the 22 states with IRV legislation
in 2003-2004.

Links to More

FairVote's submission about the implementation of IRV in Maine http://archive.fairvote.org/irv/MaineIRV_December2004.pdf.

Legislation in 2003-2004 at FairVotehttp://archive.fairvote.org/action/index.html

San Francisco’s IRV Success Story

San Francisco’s first instant runoff voting election in November 2004 went remarkably
smoothly. An exit poll by San Francisco State University found that:
“The majority of voters appear to have made the transition to
Ranked-Choice Voting with little problem…The overall finding on RCV is
positive. Wide majorities of voters knew about Ranked-Choice Voting,
understood it, and used it to rank their preferences. Further, most
prefer it, with only about one in eight saying they prefer the former
run-off system.” A rigorous analysis of election results by SFSU
professor Richard DeLeon definitively showed that voters of all racial
and ethnic groups successfully used IRV.Links to More on San Francisco’s Election Success

Common Dreams: http://archive.fairvote.org/articles/commondreams010605.htm

The bad news is that elections in 2004 were the least competitive in
history. The good news is that FairVote has a lot to say about it.

Stay tuned in February for the release of FairVote’s acclaimed annual
report, Dubious Democracy 2004, the final word on our noncompetitive
congressional races. Using this model, we then look ahead into 2006 and
beyond with our predictive Monopoly Politics report. A few teasers:

Only 10 of 435 races won by margins of less than 6%

Only 23 of 435 were won by less than 10%

California had 51 of 53 races won by landslides of at least 20%

UPCOMING EVENTS

FairVote
staff and board members frequently speak at public events, including an
event featuring FairVote board members at the Washington College of Law
on January 21, executive director Rob Richie’s talk at Harvard Law
School on January 13 and IRV America program associate Steven
Hoeschele’s talks in Amherst (MA) and Adams County (PA) in late
January.

Rob Richie to Address First Woman President SymposiumFriday, March 4 and Saturday, March 5, 2005Siena College - Loudonville, New YorkExploring the issues involved in electing the first woman president of the United States.For two days, the “First Woman President” symposium will convene an
outstanding cadre of academics, journalists and politicians studying
the issue of women in political leadership, through research or in
practice.

Rob Richie to Address Delaware A. Philip Randolph InstituteSaturday, March 19Rob will be the keynote speaker at this event.
Delaware APRI regularly holds community wide education events to
discuss particular issues and develop strategies. This year they will
focus on election analysis and their legislative agenda, which includes
election reform.

FairVote’s newly expanded Board of Directors met in Washington, D.C.
recently. It was a stimulating meeting, with exciting plans for the
year. We want to thank our many supporters who responded to our
year-end appeal for support, and to ask more of you to consider
boosting our work for a secure and powerful right to vote, better
choices at the ballot booth and a more representative government. Thank
you!

For those hungry for more democracy news, we urge you to subscribe to
excellent e-newsletters from Demos (www.demos-us.org) and
electionline.org (www.electionline.org)

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